This building in Tel Aviv is one of the many properties in Israel once owned by people who died in the Holocaust and whose heirs are unknown. / Kate Shuttleworth

by Kate Shuttleworth, Special for USA TODAY

by Kate Shuttleworth, Special for USA TODAY

TEL AVIV, Israel - The building's facade is worn and has major cracks. Its wrought-iron shutters are rusted and its terracotta roof is in need of repair.

The building near the ancient Mediterranean port of Jaffa was bought by a Jew before Israel was a state, nearly seven decades ago. But that owner never got to live in it, having perished in the Holocaust that took the lives of 6 million Jews.

Today it is worth millions of Israeli shekels and it is one of hundreds of buildings, bank accounts, art works and other assets in Israel that have never been returned to the rightful heirs of Holocaust victims.

"Many Jews for Zionist reasons invested in pre-state-Israel by buying assets, such as land, opened bank accounts, and bought stocks and bonds in companies that were active at the time," explains Elinor Kroitoru, head of the location and heir search division at the Company for Location and Restitution of Holocaust Victims' Assets in Israel.

The company, also known as Hashava, which is Hebrew for restitution, was established in 2006, to find the rightful heirs to 60,000 assets belonging to Holocaust victims in Israel -- including stocks, bonds, real estate, bank accounts and art work.

As Jews the world over took time Monday to recognize International Holocaust Remembrance Day, many alive today may not realize they have inheritances in their Holy Land. The largest-ever delegation of members of the Israeli Knesset along with hundreds of Jews from around the world held a ceremony in Poland at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the notorious Nazi concentration camp.

The assets belonged to people who prior to World War II had hoped to one day to live in a Jewish state, or wanted to make a donation toward a Jewish state being created. Some invested in it by buying land and depositing money in banks in what was then British-controlled Palestine.

When the war erupted many Jews could not escape their countries in Europe. The British government, whose military occupied the region that was to become modern Israel in 1945, seized the assets during the war.

When the war ended, "the assets were given to the State of Israel and were held as absentee property," Kroitoru said.

The same happened in Europe, where the assets of murdered Jews were left unclaimed or outright stolen by businessmen and banks and museums, forcing the relatives of the owners to fight years for what was rightfully theirs.

Jewish groups settled a claim against Austria's government and businesses in 2001 for stolen Jewish property, collecting about $360 million. Another settlement was reached in 1998 between the groups and several Swiss banks for $1.25 billion.

But the battle was not so easy in Israel either.

Major banks and the government itself were accused of stonewalling efforts to compensate heirs for the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of deposits, land, stocks and art that belonged to Jews killed in the Holocaust.

In 2006, Hashava investigators found that as many as 9,000 bank accounts alone had been identified as possibly belonging to Holocaust victims. At the time an investigation by a firm hired to look into the claims said it found about $86 million in real estate and more than 1,000 artworks in the Israeli Museum that had belonged to Holocaust victims.

In seven years since Hashava was created, 300 million Israeli shekels' worth of assets or $86 million have been turned over to the heirs of Holocaust victims. Many of the cases involved legal proceedings against banks.

"We settled all disputes with the banks out of court, bank Leumi paid us $130 million shekels, which was the Anglo-Palestine Bank at the time. It was the most common bank in the land at the time, and had a branch in London," said Kroitoru.

Today, Hashava says it has about 2,000 active cases on its books, and it's not easy to get to a successful conclusion.

Gerd Gadid Kramer is a researcher with Hashava's real estate restitution team. He has worked for four years on trying to find the heirs to a plot of land in Northern Israel worth 800,000 shekels, $229,000.

It was bought by a Jewish man in Lodz, Poland, who never made it to Israel. The first heir Gadid Kramer found was a niece in France who survived the Holocaust.

"This was one of my first cases and it took four years, we didn't know anything other than his first name and surname at the beginning and the city Lodz," he said. "When I started I looked in all the databases for surnames."

Gadid Kramer said at first he did not have any purchase documents, but later a power of attorney document was found and he was able to track insurance documents through Prudential Insurance in the United Kingdom.

He applied to the company asking for archive details for the original insurance holder and if anyone had applied for the asset. The insurance company gave Hashava's details to the person who was paid the insurance money.

"In a few weeks the person came back to us. It was the niece living in France. She described the whole story saying he had no children and describing her uncle," he said.

She submitted an application for restitution, but then when she arrived in Israel she mentioned off-handedly that her uncle had a daughter, he said.

"We were in shock," Gadid Kramer said.

A daughter would be the direct heir, but the owner's niece said she didn't know if she was alive. After much discussion they learned from the niece that the daughter was born in 1940 and had been given to a convent as an infant to save her from the Nazi gas chambers.

"Both her parents died," Gadid Kramer said.

Hashava investigated further and found that one of the girl's relatives on her mother's side took her in and brought her to Israel for a few years to live in a kibbutz. Hashava's research team eventually found her in France.

"We were able to find the daughter's name after marriage in a German database and found a nephew who held the same name via LinkedIn."

It turned out the niece knew all along she was alive but was on bad terms with her and wanted the inheritance for herself. Worse, she had masqueraded as the man's only heir to take other portions of his estate.

"This niece had claimed all of the assets of the family, from the insurance companies, depriving her cousin of her assets," Gadid Kramer said.

But it was not the surprise inheritance that moved the daughter.

"It was an emotional experience for her to receive documents like a passport belonging to her father."

Hashava is still looking for heirs to 55,000 assets in Israel. Those who think they may have a relative who owned property or assets in Israel should look for them on Hashava's website at www.hashava.info.